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Lucas Arts

This trope is named after Maniac Mansion, where a chandelier hangs just inches above your head, yet you cannot jump or climb up on a sofa to grab the key up there. The playing character's response is always "I can't reach it!" This also happens when a character dies.

When you attempt to grab the stain on the tablecloth, the character says "I don't do table cloths." When you try to use the stove, he/she says, "I'd rather use the microwave."

Special mention to the treasure hold at the start of The Curse of Monkey Island: There are tons of items scattered about the screen, and Guybrush will come up with a different excuse to ignore each one except the two items you need to take. Most amusing is his objection to a purple, horse-shaped children's floaty: "No self-respecting pirate would be seen wearing that!" Guess what he's wearing two minute later...

Curse also has a variant of the Idol puzzle mentioned above. You enter a new area, and there's a bunch of stuff for killing snakes. Before he has time to pick up anything, Guybrush is eaten by a snake. He then can't reach any of the snake-killing stuff, due to well, being inside the snake. (He can still comment on all of it, though.)

In Grim Fandango, Manny doesn't want to take some painkiller from Naranja's bottle (in Toto Santos' tattoo parlor) with his pipette because he has "enough booze at home", even though he is going to leave the city.

Sam & Max Hit the Road has an amusing example: while trying to get a book from a shelf that's just barely out of reach, Sam says that he could just about reach it if he felt like exerting himself. Which he doesn't.

Later, there's another item that's easily within reach even without stretching, and Sam says that he could just take it, but he's sure if he thinks really hard he can come up with a really complicated way to do it, and refuses to take it.

Used brilliantly, there is one item in the game, which this could be considered an Easter Egg. If you direct Sam to pick it up he says "I can't pick that up" do it again "Really, I can't pick that up" again... "I would like to pick that up, but I cannot pick that up" do it over and over he eventually breaks down sobbing. In which Max threatens the player "If I was real and not just a lovable computer game character I would totally come out of the monitor and rip your lungs out!" going it any more, Sam simply whimpers with Max saying "Don't worry Sam, maybe they'll go away"

Sierra

Sierra adventures loved these to make you carefully eke your character as close as possible to some deadly peril in order to perform an essential action.

Worst of all was when in King's Quest VII, Queen Valanice goes, "Blast! I can't reach it!" if you try to get her to retrieve an object a foot away from her in a calm, two-foot deep fountain. Well, not as much of a "fountain" and more of a "decorative pool of still water". the solution requires Valanice to get a shepherd's crook to fish it out; the animation that shows her doing this only shows her using the curved end, but not the actual length of the stick, to get it out. Evidently she just didn't want to get her hands all icky.

In Laura Bow: The Colonel's Bequest, Laura cannot reach the rope that rings a bell inside a belltower. Instead of just jumping, she is supposed to use a cane to do it. That fire poker that could serve the same purpose with its hard curved tip? Nope. Ain't gonna do it.

In Leisure Suit Larry 7: Love For Sail, Larry cannot do a lot of things just because the narrator doesn't want him to.

In Gabriel Knight 3: Blood of the Sacred, Blood of the Damned, Gabriel doesn't want to pick up a red cap in a "lost and found" box in a museum because he finds it unattractive. And yet, the player is supposed to pick it up later - this time Gabriel agreeing - for a disguise.

In Quest for Glory IV, the Thief can find a mug in one of the houses he can rob, but the game won't let you steal it because 1) it's the ugliest mug you've ever seen, and 2) there's nothing you can do with it anyway.

The first Gobliiins game is particularly hindered by the fact that the heroes do not jump and Dwayne (the only character that can pick up items and use them) can only take objects if they are on the ground, right under him. Several puzzles in the game could be avoided if he could just stretch out his arm to pick something.

In Gobliins 2, Fingus and Winkle will often just do "No, no" while shaking their head and fingers when attempting some action.

In Goblins 3, the main character is at one point turned into a giant and yet, he still has troubles getting to things which should normally be easier to do when in giant size.

In Woodruff And The Schnibble Of Azimuth, the main character (Woodruff) has to go past an acid liquid river but is barefoot. If he has one boot (which is acid-resistant), he says that he can cross it by hopping on one leg. But not being the sharpest pencil in the drawer, he hops in the acid with his bare foot and is forced to go back. He could simply try again and hop on the booted foot this time, learning from his mistake (even an idiot can think this), but no, he will repeat the same mistake again and again. The player is meant to find another boot so he can cross the river full-booted every time. But then, Woodruff is an Idiot Hero.

Psygnosis

In the firstDiscworld adventure game, several times will Rincewind say "That doesn't work!" for any action he can't perform, without giving any explanation as to why (which could give you an idea to the difficulty of the game).

In Discworld II Rincewind graduates to actively hindering the player, saying "Good idea... but not just yet" whenever the player tries to do something that is part of a puzzle solution, but not the next part.

Other

In Dragon's Dogma, killing bandits is like breathing. One quest totally ignores that fact. You have to catch a bandit running around your village & you're inexplicably not allowed to kill him. You have to hit him with attacks to stun him so he might stand still long enough for you to grab him but you're not allowed to target him the way you would other enemies. If he gets to the gate, he disappears even though there's no way he could possibly lift it to get through. You should be able to go out & catch him after he leaves but you can't. You should be able to hide inside one of the places he's there to rob & catch him when he gets there but the A.I is a cheating bastard. These kinds of things are to be expected since it's a quest about a "thief" who just runs around like a crazed lizard instead of stealing anything.

JonTron: Nightshade's hard to impress, you take him to a museum and tell him, "Look at that giant bronze horse from the B.C. times," and he's like, "Nuthin unusual here." You take him to a future history museum and say, "Hey, look at that giant hologram horse from the distant C.E. times," and he's like (points with robotic arm) "Nightshade can't do dat!"

In the 1997 Blade Runner video game, trying to interact with an object on the other side of an impassable obstacle, such as a chasm, results in Ray saying: "That's.... impossible."

In Star Ocean: The Second Story, in the item creation mode, you sometimes get a mystifying message that says "couldn't do anything." Not, "It didn't work," or "Those don't go together," or anything else that makes sense. "Couldn't do anything."

In fact, the only thing stopping Travis from leaving Silent Hill all-together is a fallen tree. Not a thick fog, not an invisible wall, not a magically-appearing chasm with no visible bottom... but a fallen tree. He simply refuses to step over it, with no other explanation besides: "Looks like I can't go that way!"

This trope manifests itself in each of the Moon Logic Puzzles in the game. For example, in one, a character who is carrying no small number of weapons cannot bust a few bicycle locks with brute force; they have to search out a number of clues. Sometimes, the character with a crowbar, chisel, shotgun, and Big Freakin' Sword can't break down a simple wooden door; they have to solve obscure riddles or make a handle out of some wax, a horseshoe, and a lighter. No one brings bolt cutters with them in Silent Hill; everyone prefers to Solve the Soup Cans. Even alien blasters are no match for a door if the plot demands you solve a riddle instead.

Tales of Symphonia has the infamous Ymir Forest, where Lloyd cannot reach a piece of fruit that is three inches away from him in the water. Instead, you have to go around the whole forest, coaxing little fish into pushing the fruit onto the shore.

This is also despite having a character who can fly in the party, and another who can summon beings who can either fly or move on water.

Justified in the old The Hobbit text game, in which Bilbo must frequently ask for help from Gandalf or Thorin the dwarfnote Dwarves are taller than hobbits., because he's a hobbit and therefore too short to climb out windows and the like.

Delphine Software's Future Wars has a point where you have to soak a robotic wolf with a leaky carrier bag of water before it runs dry, and you have to stand almost on top of it to do so. It's a good thing it's the world's laziest cybercarnivore.

Aggravated by rather clumsy controls (unless you use an optical mouse, which were not available back then) and by most other puzzles in the game averting I Can't Reach It.

In Peasant's Quest, attempting to "take plaque" gives the response "You have enough of that on your browning, rotten peasant teeth already," without saying a word about the engraved rectangular sign in front of Rather Dashing.

This happens to children in The Sims 3, who are too short to reach some things on countertops, like the goldfish bowl. This problem was avoided in The Sims 2 by giving the children a small footstool to use.

Die Hard for the NES has a rope you can rappel down the building with, but only after a certain part in the plot. Otherwise you get John saying "I'd have to be desperate to tie that and jump off. No thanks." The same character has no qualms about leaping out of a window to his death at any time.

Early on, the hero of Phantasmagoria 2 cannot reach his wallet, which has ended up under his sofa, so you have to get his pet rat to retrieve it.

Metal Gear Solid features a cutscene in disguise. You're watching through the scope of your rocket launcher as the Cyborg Ninja distracts Metal Gear, so you can shoot it. You can control the camera just fine, but if you attempt to pull the trigger, Snake's response is "It's no good... I can't do it."

Of course, given the funky logic the game runs on, it may very well cause a temporal paradox..

ICOM's Déjà Vu, Shadowgate, and Uninvited featured this trope. Examples abounded, such as in Shadowgate, when a magic flute was in a fountain of deadly acid. Forget pushing it to safety with the butt of your spear; find the magic gauntlet hidden inside a well.

L.A. Noire's interrogations force you to choose one piece of evidence to catch someone in a lie. In some instances, multiple pieces of evidence in tandem could prove them wrong, but each one individually leaves doubt and thus don't work.

In Resident Evil Outbreak, the first map opens with you in a bar that gets attacked by zombies. You are required to flee to the roof, jump to the adjacent building and fight your way down to the street from there. You are not allowed to simply walk out the front door of the bar, even when the game gives you a hard time limit to reach the street.

Early in Rule of Rose you must get scissors hanging from a rope just out of your reach. The only way to get to them is to find a crank in a locked room to lower the said rope, never mind that the room contains, among other things, a rubbish bin you could stand on to get your hands on them.

The point and click adventure game Blazing Dragons was filled with this. Generally Flicker's objection to doing something not intended was; "No, that's not safe."

An early puzzle in Alone In The Dark 2008 has you balance a fire extinguisher on a wooden platform, then pull a rope to carry it to the upper floor where you can retrieve it and use it to clear out some flames. Because the game won't let you just carry it up the climbable ledges on the other side of the room.

In Sonic the Hedgehog (2006), Silver claims that he "can't stop lasers with [his] Psychokinesis". Normally it would make sense, because the lasers would be too fast to stop, but in this game the lasers move incredibly slowly, so it would be feasible for him to at least put something in front of it before it hits.

Dark Seed 2 has many of these moments, but the worst is when Mike Dawson won't move an anvil on an ice-box that has life-saving medicine in it, even though the person who needs the medicine is close to dying. The anvil is too heavy for Mike to lift, but he doesn't even attempt to push it or jimmy it off. Hell, even breaking the table's legs so that the anvil and medicine box fall down would have made more sense. Somebody ended up dying because Mike wouldn't even attempt to move the bloody anvil.note It's later revealed that the ice box's Dark World equivalent is the container that holds the Big Bad, thus making it quite possible that removing the anvil would cause a Non-Standard Game Over that the developer's just didn't feel like programming into the game.

Let's not forget this: "I don't want to touch this crate, I might get a splinter or a spider bite."

Teenagent. You need an empty plastic bag. You find a plastic bag containing chunk of meat. You'd think you could simply leave the meat anywhere on the floor, or toss it into a trashcan, but nope—not in adventure game land. You have to dump the meat into one specific place, a pot of soup that you aren't going to use for anything else.

Played painfully straight in The Walking Dead, where the only way to grab a map that's next to where Kenny is sitting on the train is to first grab a bottle of whiskey from another car, then give it to Chuck to drink, then let Kenny know that Chuck has some alcohol to share so he'll get up and free the space. Asking Kenny to simply lean to his left a little is out of the question.

In Lego Adaptation Games, a character will turn towards the player and shrug if they're told to interact with an object that they don't have the qualifications, tool, or spell to interact with it with.

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